红色在中西文化中的内涵差异及其翻译策略(13)

The Differences of the Connotation of the Color Red and Their Translation Strategies红色在中西文化中的内涵差异及其翻译策略

subject. There is a news of describing Lotus. Its title quotes two lines of poetry: ― 接天莲叶无穷碧,映日荷花别样红。‖. Literal translation would seem lengthy, in order to comply with concise news headlines features. the poetry is translated as ―Lotuses in full bloom”. Therefore, free translation needs the translator deeply probe the original text, and make the text reach the combination in order to seize the key points and play a touch role.

3.3 Substitution Method

It refers to use a color word to substitute another color in the original language word, the translation can achieve the same expression effect with the original text. There are two situations required substitution method:

1. People often link the specific color with quality, these qualities or characteristics used to raise awareness of specific reactions or emotions, which are different in people with different languages and cultures. This difference is divided into two categories:

(1) A color word in a language and culture have a certain associative meanings, but in another culture without such meaning.

(2) Both two languages and cultures contain a certain amount of associative meaning, but their meanings are different

The first one can use free translation, while the second one, substitution method is available. Tang dynasty poet Wangwei (相思): ―红豆生南国，春来发几枝；愿君多采撷,此物最相思”,only 20 words, but revealed the poet‘s deep feeling. In 《The Story of Stone》, the words:“滴不尽相思血泪抛红豆”,it means lover's tears are compared to red beans. The《Bible》records that Essau want to get a bowl of red bean soup by betray her own son. Therefore, Westerners believe that red bean signifies folly and forget friendship for profit .so it can be translated for ―love bean‖ to avoid taboos. And clear show its Chinese symbol meaning“Love‖, United Kingdom translator David Hawks in translation of 《红楼梦》, considering that red lead to Westerners a bad associations, so he translates it into the other title named 《The Story of Stone》（《石头记》）.Similar examples abound. United States writer Hawthorne‘s novel The Scarlet Letter was free translation. In some Chinese books, it named ―《红字》‖，I‘m afraid most Chinese readers are difficult to link the content and the affair under this title. So why not translated into《罪爱》？

2. For real color words, usually use a different color in Chinese and English

Attention to fuzziness in color words and the language itself. For example, in Chinese “红茶”, ―红糖‖cannot be translated as ―red tea‖, ―red sugar‖. Partly because of the color words is a special kind of fuzzy sets, the number of the color is very large, but the number of describe words are very limited. Spectrum does not have a precise color boundary, people are vague about color spectrum. From the Visual point of view, red, black, Brown was quite close to the color of the spectrum, there is no clear boundaries. So when Chinese people distinguish tea and sugar water color, visually see color is red, but when the British see them no longer red, those are black and Brown. On the other hand, there is a big difference in Chinese and English about word characteristics. Generally speaking, the Chinese words are fixed and pay more attention to exact, standard, rigorous and flexible word meaning, in English, a word